Search the SPREP Catalogue

The purpose of this report is to provide an assessment of the current condition of coral reef ecosystems in U.S. jurisdictions, including the U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Navassa, Florida, Flower Garden Banks and other banks of the Gulf of Mexico, Hawaii, the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, American Samoa, the Pacific Remote Island Areas, Guam, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI). The report also provides an examination of coral reefs in the Pacific Freely Associated States (FAS), including the Republic of the Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, and Republic of Palau. The report focuses primarily on shallow-water portions of these states and territories, from the shoreline to the maximum depth at which sunlight-dependent corals can survive. Coral communities occuring in deep and cold waters are the subject of a complementary report currently under development.

The purpose of this section is to provide a management context to reef restoration. We assume some familiarity with what coral reefs are. A key point we make is that reef restoration should be treated as just one option within an integrated coastal management (ICM) planning agenda for a stretch of coast. Too often, enthusiastic proponents of active restoration omit to consider the wider context and factors outside their control which may jeopardise their efforts.

Mauka (toward the mountains) and makai (toward the ocean) are not just directional references; they embody our fundamental natural and cultural resources, land and ocean. Hawaiians believe there is a balance between ocean and land. In traditional times, the ocean and its marine life were as well known as the life attributes of the upland areas. This intimate relationship with nature resonates today in the modern principle of sustainability. We continue a strong interconnected, interrelated and interdependent relationship with our natural and cultural resources. Some call it ecosystem-based stewardship.

Coral reefs are vital ecosystems, providing a source of income, food arid coastal protection for millions of people; arid recent studies have shown that coral reef goods and services provide an annual net benefit of US$30 billion to economies worldwide (Cesar et al, 2003). Coral reefs are composed mainly of reef-building corals: colonial animals (polyps) that live symbiotically with the single-celled microalgae (zooxanthellae) in their body tissue and secrete a calcium carbonate skeleton. Coral reefs are formed by hundreds of thousands of these polyps and are found in warm, shallow, clear, low-nutrient tropical and sub-tropical waters, with optimum temperatures of 25-29eC, although they exist in ranges from 18eC (Florida) to 33eC (Persian Gulf) (Buddemeier and Wilkinson, 1994). They are incredibly diverse, covering only 0.2% of the ocean's floor but containing 25% of its species and they are often dubbed the 'tropical rainforests of the oceans' (Roberts, 2003).

The objective of this project is to formalize the experiences, outcomes and lessons learned from previous GEF projects, as well as major non-GEF initiatives involving coral reefs and associated ecosystems. The project aims to comprehensively identify, analyze, and translate lessons into good practices and information resources, and then disseminate this information globally for use in future project design and development. Based on its history of supporting coral reef biodiversity, management and sustainable development, this project will help the GEF fulfill a major mandate to identify what has worked and what could be improved upon in supporting biodiversity conservation. In combination with other GEF projects, this effort will also help the GEF and other major non-GEF projects achieve an improved return on investment for future projects involving coral reefs and associated ecosystems.

Tongatapu, like Tahiti, was visited by many early European navigators and was one of the first of the South Pacific islands to be charted in any detail. Though it was discovered (and named Amsterdam Island) by Tasman in January 1643 (Sharp 1968, 152-158), the first comments on the sand cays of the surrounding reefs were made by Cook during his second voyage, with the Resolution and Adventure, in October 1773. On this occasion Cook spent less than a week at Tongatapu, anchored in the northwest, and commented that "it would have taken up more time than I could spare to have surveyed these parts Minutely as there are a number of small Islots and reefs of rocks extending to the NE even further than we could see" (1961, 261). His naturalists, the Forsters, did not describe the cays, though Georg Forster remarked on the emersion of reef limestones on Tongatapu and its similarity to the continuing emergence of the land in Scandinavia (1777, I, 453). Cook returned on his last voyage in 1777, with the Resolution and Discovery, and stayed for a month. He anchored near modern Nuku'alofa and landed on Pangaimotu and possibly other islands (1967, 124-125, 155, 890). He charted the area but gave no description of the cays.

Country profiles on the state of coral reefs systems in the Pacific